The use of pesticides: Is it an abuse of life?

Nazrul Islam, The Daily Star, Asia News Network/Dhaka

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and forestall. He will end by destroying the earth. -- Albert Schweitzer

The recent drive followed by newspaper reports against food adulteration generated a huge interest among the members of the public. Each and everybody want fresh, harmless and non- adulterated food for survival. If foods are poisonous, how could we sustain a sound physical and mental health?

However, the ongoing hullabaloo is one side of the coin. Poisoning may occur at various stages of a food item -- production, preservation and processing. The current drive is centering preservation and processing stages. At these stages, foods are adulterated with mixing preservatives, color or taste- enhancing materials consisting chemicals. These chemicals, mostly synthetic in nature, are surely harmful for not only human bodies but any living being.

But we generally overlook or we are not at all aware of dangerous poisoning of food items at the production stage. Our ultimate source of food is plants. But plants, especially crop plants, are heavily intoxicated with pesticide, herbicide and rodenticide. In the name of pest and weed control, thousands of tons of dangerous poisons are being applied in the crop fields and sometimes directly to the harveded crops while preserving in the stores.

For agriculture purpose around 80 active ingredients represented by over 250 products (trade names) are registered in Bangladesh. In addition, around 25 active ingredients represented by 60 non-agriculture products are registered. There are many unrecognized companies producing numerous pesticide products, which are notorious for being adulterated and many do not have any labels. What is most alarming is that pesticide use is very indiscriminate in Bangladesh. There are areas where pesticides are used in excessive quantities.

To kill insects and pests, we are making our food items intoxicated. Insecticides are applied to seed and plant to give those a poisonous cover so that the insect would take the sap of the plant and die. But a portion of the poison remains in the plant as residue.

The residual effects of these chemicals are so pervasive that nothing is escapable in the world from the contamination of pesticides. Poison is everywhere -- food grains, vegetables, fruits, fish, meat, air and water. They have been found in bodies of vast majority of human beings regardless of age. They occur in the mother's milk, and probably in the tissues of the unborn child.

The common pesticides used in agriculture is chlorinated hydrocarbon and organic phosphorus. DDT, chlordane, heptachlor, dieldrin, aldrin, endrin etc are in the chlorinated hydrocarbon group while malathion, parathion etc are in organic phosphorus group.

They are so dangerous that a quantity equivalent to a size of aspirin tablet of Aldrin can kill 400 quails.

Every poison we put out into the environment comes back to us through air, water and food. Through bioaccumulation these are stored in various parts of the body, especially having fat. Adrenals, testes, thyroid, liver, kidney are the most likely organs where these poisons accumulate. These poison slowly seep into our bodies and take years to show up as diseases.

The modern insecticides have immense power to enter into the most vital process of body and change them in sinister and often deadly ways. They destroy the very enzymes whose function is to protect body from harm, they block the oxidation process from which the body receives its energy, they prevent the normal functioning of various organs, and they may initiate in certain cells the slow and irreversible changes that leads to malignancy.

The proliferation of use of pesticides is linked to the Green Revolution. In 1956 only 3,000 kgs of pesticides were used in the country. Now about 15,000,000 kgs of insecticides are being used every year to control pests and weeds. The increase is 500,000 times in 50 years.

The agriculture production increased after introduction of the green revolution, a byproduct of agricultural imperialism. But at the same time, it brought a lot of menace for not only human beings but all living creatures. The success of green revolution crops solely depends on application of high doses of fertilizer, water and, of course, pesticides. The excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is not only destroying the soil structure, but ruining the entire biological system on the earth surface. They polluted water, surface and ground, and food grains.

Rachel Carson, the writer of world famous book Silent Spring described it as "Elixirs of death". Every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals from the moment of conception until death, said Carson in her book.

There is a relation between green revolution and invention of pesticides. The insecticide industry is the child of the World War II. In the course of developing chemical warfare, some of the chemicals created in the laboratories were found lethal to insects. However, the discovery did not come by a chance. Insecticides were widely used to test chemicals as agents of death for man.

Economic development now-a-days has become byword in Bangladesh. But the country is paying enormous price for this much-hyped progress, which has brought in its wake ecological devastation and numerous problems.

There was no research or data available about the share of economic and health costs of environmental degradation emerging from growing pollution of soil, water and air in Bangladesh. But the gastrointestinal, liver, cancer, kidney, heart, asthma and tropical diseases increased manifolds in the country. The sprouting of hundreds of clinics and hospitals, and rush of huge number of people for treatment abroad, are the proof of gravity of the situation. The country is paying a heavy price to bear the cost of treatment and loss of manpower due to illness and untimely deaths.

It's human nature to shrug off what may seem to be a vague threat of future. We are still unheeded of the gravity of the danger. But time has come to pay heed to this ominous danger before it goes beyond control especially when alternatives to the use of harmful chemicals in agriculture are available.

The writer is a freelance journalist and environmentalist.